Free Republic

The first half of 2023 will come to a close on Friday. And when it does, one of Wall Street's big predictions for 2023 will officially be a bust — the stock market did not fall and the US economy did not enter recession. When the year began, we flagged a "surprising consensus" among Wall Street strategists, many of whom expected a dip in the stock market in early '23 as the economy fell into a downturn before a rebound over the second half of the year. Instead, investors have been treated to a stock market rally accentuated by AI...

Elections are supposed to be about the future, but Donald Trump is stuck in the past. He is dead set on running for president in 2024 by campaigning on the very worst part of his record. In his much-hyped return to the mainstream media, a CNN town hall on May 11, Trump doubled down on his claims that millions of fraudulent votes were the cause of his defeat in 2020. He said he had no regrets about his behavior before and during the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, and that he does not owe Mike Pence an apology for...

Donald Trump criticized Brexit leader Nigel Farage, Wednesday during their interview on GB News for bringing up the 2020 election and then accusing the former president of talking about it too much. Discussing Fox News settling a defamation case with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million, Farge said, “Fox, which has been an incredibly important channel in the States, just paid out a large sum of money.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — No president wants to give up the power and prestige that comes with the office after only one term, and Joe Biden is no exception. He’s pushing forward even though polls show a majority of Americans don’t want to see him run again. We went back to look at when modern presidents announced their decisions to seek a second term, what their Gallup approval ratings were at the time and how things turned out for them. One theme: Primary battles are a sign of whether a president will win reelection. That’s good news for Biden, who appears...

I’m interested in starting a creative discussion on the topic of voting integrity. Should Republicans create a transparent, legally valid, and unassailable voting system, a standard for accurate and verifiability, contrasted to our current unverifiable voting fraud system? Should Republicans prepare to challenge voter fraud by contrasting this standard with current examples of corrupt systems. Should Republicans prepare to fight with law-fare or other tactics necessary to discredit Democrat alternatives? The Republicans could create a pre-voting election before the national election which provides a baseline of valid votes. These votes would be released after the general election for purposes of...

Is this the right time for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) to run for president ? Potential candidates calculate odds, take polls, and count dollars to determine whether they should run. But it’s often not an easy decision; timing is the biggest conundrum in politics. DeSantis once seemed to have a glide path to the Republican Party's presidential nomination. His strong popularity among Republicans nationwide, together with his big reelection win and former President Donald Trump’s flubbing the midterm elections, put him in the driver’s seat. But now that the nomination is hitched to the wild uncertainties of indictments, some DeSantis...

BUCKINGHAM, Virginia — Lindsey Taylor loved running elections here. The previous registrar had spent nearly three decades in the job, and Taylor, 37, hoped to do the same when she was first hired in 2019. She loved her staff and the volunteer poll workers, and she took pride in the detail-oriented work. She implemented dozens of new laws in 2020, ran elections through the pandemic and impressed many in the rural, conservative, tight-knit community of Buckingham County. But then the voter fraud claims started. In January, the GOP assumed control of the Buckingham County Electoral Board that oversees her office,...

Former President Donald Trump was arraigned in New York on Tuesday on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, but the largest blow to his hopes of reclaiming the White House might have occurred nearly 1,000 miles away in Wisconsin, where liberals secured a majority on the state's Supreme Court for the first time in 15 years. Hours after Trump became the first American president to face felony charges, Judge Janet Protasiewicz claimed victory over former Justice Dan Kelly, a major Trump supporter and one of the Wisconsin Republicans central to the former president's attempts to throw out the results...

Nobody is that stupid .... surprise, the voters of Chicago are!!!!! Let's go Brandon, the new Chicago cheer, does not refer to Slow Joe but to the new Chicago Mayor. The new Mayor has vowed to reduce school class sizes ... they will be reduced because of the number of children shot and killed on the way to school. Not to worry, Social Workers will be on the murder scenes to help relatives handle the deaths and assist in getting the organ traffic paperwork signed. Be assured that although your children will be guaranteed to graduate, they will not be...

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for president on Wednesday, becoming the second House Republican to throw their support behind the Florida governor — even though he has not launched a campaign for the White House. In a statement released by the Never Back Down super PAC, which is supporting a DeSantis presidential bid, Massie called the Florida governor “a proven energetic leader.” “America needs a leader who is decisive, respects the Constitution, understands policy, puts family first, and leads by inspiring,” Massie said. “That’s why I’m endorsing Ron DeSantis for President.” “If we make the...

The pair of candidates spent the weekend trying to woo over undecided voters ahead of Tuesday’s electionThe Windy City decided on its new mayor Tuesday after a tight race between two blues, with a progressive, Bernie Sanders-endorsed Democrat taking the keys to the Chicago mayor's office. Progressive Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson defeated his moderate opponent, former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas, to take the Chicago mayor’s race, replacing outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who came in third before the runoff. Vallas garnered the support of the Chicago police union and major business groups while Johnson got the backing of...

The Drudge Report, Matt Drudge’s right-leaning news aggregator ran a headline on Friday declaring former President Donald Trump threatened Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg in a Thursday Truth Social post, which Trump deleted on Friday afternoon.

For the first time, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has criticized former President Donald Trump for refusing to concede power following the 2020 election – in a generalized comment referencing events more than 200 years ago. DeSantis, who condemned rioters inside the Capitol where he once served, but has said little about Trump's push to have courts and allies toss out the results, made remarks during an interview with Piers Morgan, where he also blasted Trump administration chaos.

WASHINGTON — As the Republican Party gears up for the 2024 presidential race, there’s a large image in the rearview mirror that refuses to go away: The 2020 presidential election. About a week ago, the Colorado GOP selected a 2020 election denier to lead the party for the next two years. That came weeks after the Michigan Republicans selected a 2020 denier to lead their party as well. When a party loses a presidential election, typically it sorts through the wreckage and figures out how to move forward. The GOP, however, has not done this following the aftermath of the...

Former Bush 43 adviser Karl Rove said Monday on FNC’s “The Story” that former President Donald Trump needs to “move on” from claiming he won the 2020 presidential election. Sunday at CPAC in Maryland, Trump said, “We are never going back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, and Jeb Bush.” Anchor Martha MacCallum said, “President Trump went after you at one point, went after other Republicans and said, you know, that’s not the direction we’re going anymore. We’re moving hard on America first, and this is the last battle. Everyone knows it. The country could be lost forever.”

Former President Trump plans to attack Bush-era Republicans in his remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday and urge those in attendance to finish the job of transforming the GOP by backing him for the White House in 2024. Trump is expected to deliver CPAC’s keynote address at roughly 5:30 p.m. in remarks that are expected to last roughly 90 minutes. Trump has been a staple of the annual gathering for years, delivering marquee speeches during and after his presidency. The event, this year in National Harbor, Maryland, is now dominated by his most ardent supporters and he is...

LANSING, Mich. — Michigan Republicans on Saturday picked Kristina Karamo to lead the party in the battleground state, fully embracing an election-denying Trump acolyte after her failed bid for statewide office, one in which she unsuccessfully sued to throw out mail-in votes in Detroit and refused to concede. Ms. Karamo won a majority of delegate votes at the state party’s convention in Lansing, the state capital, after three rounds of voting that — slowed by paper ballots and hand counting — went on hours longer than the period for which the party had originally rented the convention space. Her victory...

George Soros wants to destroy the Republican Party. He’s made that very clear many times. So when Trump loyalists started spreading a video of remarks he made recently purporting to show Soros endorsing Ron DeSantis over Trump for the Republican nomination I knew there was something very fishy going on. Soros did express hope that DeSantis is the Republican nominee, but not because he thought the governor would make a good president. He hates DeSantis just as he hates Trump. What he wants is a 3-way race for president, which would guarantee a Democrat victory.He is convinced that if DeSantis...

Donald Trump was a great if imperfect president. By the third year of his presidency, the country was flourishing. The economy was roaring, jobs were up, incomes were up, gas prices were down, and America & Americans were doing fairly well. But then a funny thing happened on the way to the election. The swamp struck back via Covid and the George Floyd protests. Neither of those was of Trump’s making, but both were utilized by Democrats to steal the election. The Democrats didn’t create Covid or put Floyd in the morgue, but they used the lockdowns and the riots...

Nancy Pelosi rightfully will go down as one of the greatest speakers in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives. I’m not sure I would agree with Pelosi on a single policy issue; that’s not the point. As far as leadership ability and political smarts, Pelosi ran circles around the bumbling Republicans of her time. Pelosi got things done for the Left in a way no recent Republican leader could for the Right. When the stakes were highest, she was able to corral her votes. Simultaneously, when the far Left went too far, she was willing to slap them...